The Attack
I was attacked at the gas station yesterday. Totally unprovoked in my opinion. The attacker obviously had different ideas. I’d just run my card, keyed in my pin, and was putting my card back in my wallet when a wasp landed on the inside of my right wrist and stung me. I didn’t bother to ask why, I just whacked it. Wasp and cards went flying.
The sting raised a nice welt. It looked like a miniature caldera with a black hole in the middle where the stinger stayed. I can still see it this morning. It itches. Oddly enough, there wasn’t a great deal of pain. The inside of the wrist must have fewer nerves than most places I’ve been stung. I had a brief moment of panic with the idea he might have hit a vein or artery that would pump the poison right to my heart, but then I recalled how many times I’ve been stung over the years and realized it was unlikely this event was suddenly going to send me into terminal anaphylactic shock.
I’m still perplexed as to how I and the stinging creature came into contact. I said it was a wasp, but I have no idea. It just landed in umbrage and proceeded to sting. I whacked and didn’t look for a body. I was ticked off, thinking of all the times I’d been stung, to now be stung at a gas pump. It seemed totally unreasonable. But it is further proof that life is far from reasonable, and if you expect reason, you’ll be sorely disappointed. I guess, however, if I needed that lesson, getting it from a stinging insect was better than most unreasonable things that could have happened to me.
John W. Wilson is the author of The Long Goodbye: A Caregiver's Tale